I’m ashamed of Nigeria’s 4,500MW of power –AfDB president

Mr Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), says it is unacceptable for Nigeria to be delivering 4,500 megawatts of electricity to a population of over 190 million people.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Africa Investment Forum ongoing in Sandton, South Africa, the former minister of agriculture said he was ashamed of the country’s power generation capacity

“My own perspective in everything that I do is that my philosophy of development is simple; if I am not ashamed of something I don’t change it. But if I am ashamed of something, I’d change it,” he told CNBC Africa.

“I don’t think its acceptable that Nigeria is hovering in 4,500 megawatts space. No. Nigeria ought to be in 40,000 megawatts space. That is what we should be talking about.” He said the African Development Bank has invested over $200million in driving power generation and transmission in Nigeria.

“I think that we as a bank are strongly supportive, we’ve been investing in Nigeria for quite some time, we have been working with the minister of power right now,” Adesina said.

“We are working with them on the Transmission Company of Nigeria, in which we have invested over $200 million to help to improve the transmission line.

“We’ve supported Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading company because they had issues in terms of liquidity and we provided $200 million to help them unblock some of those things

“We are also going to be investing in solar. With the minister of power, we are looking at something in the Jigawa area, which would be about 1,000 megawatts.

“We are also investing in other types of renewable energy, on the small scale”.

The federal government of Nigeria has said it would be generating 9,000 megawatts of electricity by December 2018.